Here are some final notes from the Patriots 21-12 victory over San Diego in the AFC championship game.

At 18-0, the Patriots have tied the NFL record for overall victories in a season. Both the 1984 San Francisco 49ers and the 1985 Chicago Bears went 18-1 in winning Super Bowl titles.

The Patriots are making their fourth appearance in the Super Bowl in the last seven seasons and an NFL-high sixth in the last 25 years.

New England is now 11-1 at home in the playoffs, with 11 consecutive wins; 6-1 all-time in AFC championship games; 21-12 all-time in the playoffs.

The victory was the 100th of Tom Brady's career (100-26) and he is 14-2 (.875) in the playoffs, trailing only the great Bart Starr (9-1, .900) in winning percentage.

The victory was Bill Belichick's fourth conference championship as a head coach. Only Don Shula (6) and Tom Landry (5) led their teams to more Super Bowls.

Asante Samuel had a huge interception in the second quarter, leading to a 12-yard touchdown pass to Jabar Gaffney. He has five career playoff interceptions, second only to Rodney Harrison's seven.

Tedy Bruschi played in his 21st playoff game to set the team record. Jerry Rice holds the NFL record with 29 playoff games.

It's on to the Super Bowl.

The New England Patriots continued their path to an undefeated season, pushing back the San Diego Chargers 21-12 in the AFC championship game.

Tom Brady threw three interceptions, but also two touchdown passes.

New England is now 18-0 on the season and will play the NFC champion, either Green Bay or New York, in the Super Bowl on Feb. 3.

The Patriots defense continually thwarted San Diego drives deep into their territory, forcing four field goals.

Laurence Maroney rushed for over 122 yards for the second consecutive playoff game.

The crowd began chanting "Super Bowl, Super Bowl'' with 3:00 left after Maroney made a key first down run.

The game ended with red, white and blue confetti flitting through the air, swirling around in the wind that whipped through Gillette Stadium.

The Patriots came out slow, with Tom Brady having a passer rating of 29.4 in the first quarter, but came on in the second to take a 14-9 lead into the half.

Two Patriot interceptions off Philip Rivers helped, the first by Asante Samuel leading to a 12-yard touchdown pass from Brady to Jabar Gaffney that gave the Patriots a 14-6 lead.

Ellis Hobbs had an interception on the next series, but Wes Welker dropped a third-down pass that forced the Patriots to punt.

The Patriots have been helped by the fact that San Diego's LaDainian Tomlinson hasn't played since the first series of the game. It was announced that he has a sore knee but could return.

Still, the Chargers stayed close as his replacements, Michael Turner and Darren Sproles, provided a strong running game. Sproles, in fact, ran for 34 yards on consecutive draws to help the Chargers drive down for their third field goal of the game, with eight seconds left in the half.

After that, Rivers, with a brace on his injured right knee, left and went into the San Diego locker room.

Of note, the game time temperature was 23 degrees, with a wind chill of nine.
Entering the game, the Patriots had a record of 22-3 since 1993 when the game-time temperature is 34 or lower.

It's an hour before kick-off, the crowd is slowly filtering in and both teams are coming out for warm-ups. Based on the flags atop the goal posts, the wind appears to be whipping around pretty good.

San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers, who injured his knee in last week's win over Indianapolis, is on the field throwing passes, but so is back-up Billy Volek, who isn't wearing any long sleeves under his jersey (Rivers is). Rivers is testing his injured right knee by jumping back and forth. Most of Rivers' passes are in the short-to-medium range.

The inactive players have been announced. The Patriots list includes wide receiver Troy Brown, one of two players on the team who were on the 1996 team that won the AFC championship.

We'll check in once in a while from the game.